The National Council for the Maltese Language has issued the second edition of its manual for using the Maltese language on computers. It tackles issues related to Maltese characters in word processing and e-mails.

The manual guides the users on how to activate the language bar in Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista and 7) so they can write documents (in Microsoft Word, Excel and other software) and e-mails using the Maltese keyboard layout, which can then be read by anyone from anywhere including webmail services such as Gmail and Yahoo. Each step is illustrated with screenshots.

The language bar (with the Maltese keyboard layout) allows the user to use the most common fonts (like Arial, Times New Roman, Calibri, Cambria, Comic Sans, Tahoma and others), eliminating the possibility that the Maltese letters appear as strange symbols (like [ ] { } ` ).

There is a guide on how to use Unicode (UTF-8) encoding in e-mails so users can write and read e-mails both in Maltese and English properly.

The manual insists that users should not use any Maltese fonts which are not compatible with Unicode (UTF-8), such as Arius, Malta, Maltnen, Maltv, Maltaard, and Tornado.

These fonts were produced many years ago and have been distributed widely among computer users in the late 80s and 90s. There is also an FAQs section based on the feedback that the National Council for the Maltese Language received from users of the first edition published in 2008.

The manual can be downloaded as a PDF document at www.kunsilltalmalti.gov.mt/filebank/documents/kompjuter.pdf.

There is also a Facebook group the Technical Committee for IT named "Il-Malti u l-Informatika".